COPPELL, TEXAS – Every touring audio company knows the challenge: build a world-class production, and then the venue changes everything. For Mercury Sound & Lighting, that challenge became the defining feature of its latest and most dynamic project to date, the traveling DroneArt Show, produced by Fever.
Mercury is the audio production parter for this choreographed performance that combines live music, synchronized drones and immersive sound design at venues around the United States. The show moves from open fields to baseball stadiums and cricket arenas, each with drastically different acoustics, reflective surfaces and audience configurations. No two venues are the same, and the audio must be flawless at every one of them.
To meet this show’s demanding challenges, Mercury turned to Eastern Acoustic Works’ (EAW®), a brand that founder Dave Johnson has trusted for years. The company is now touring with a full EAW rig, including 16 Anna™ ADAPTive arrays, four Otto™ subs and 28 NT206L loudspeakers, 24 of which are active at any given show.
According to Drew Hornback, Project Manager at Mercury Sound & Lighting, the decision to bring EAW’s ADAPTive technology on the road was both practical and transformative. “We’ve always had the product. Dave’s always been a big fan,” he explains. “But it hasn’t been until this year that we’re really implementing it to its full extent.” The result has been a level of control Mercury’s clients have never experienced before, including the ability to suppress slap-back off outfield walls one night and manage reflections in a covered cricket ground the next.
Jonathan Ball, the A1 who oversees system deployment and tuning on the tour, sees ADAPTive as a gamechanger. The team typically flies eight Anna modules per side, deploying NT206Ls as out-fills or front-fills depending on the venue width. “We’re seeing excellent coverage with them,” Ball says. “The more we tweak, the more we build out the file within Resolution, the better results we’re seeing. It’s like magic. You see reflections and then you hit that ADAPTive button and things go away. You start hearing things more clearly.”
While the Anna arrays handle the primary coverage, the NT206Ls play a crucial role in shaping the show’s impact. “The NT206s have a bite to them,” Ball explains. “When you add them in, it gives the system that definition that just drives and hits you in the gut.” Mercury travels with 28 NT206Ls, using 24 at each show and keeping four as spares, giving the team the flexibility to adapt quickly to each venue’s geometry and audience layout.
Four Otto subs, deployed two per side, extend the system’s reach during the show’s most visceral moments. “We have a four-string quartet, so we have a cello player and a viola player that are really hitting down there,” Ball says. “The Anna boxes have an incredible amount of low end already, but then you add the Ottos in and you can feel it all the way back into the stands.”
What separates ADAPTive is the precision available through EAW’s Resolution software. “I love that you have the possibility to change individual parameters,” Ball says. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s your button and it’s perfect.’ You can tweak, throw a little farther and adjust a little bit to get exactly what you want. It has all of that built in.”
Hornback adds, “Us being able to control slap back and what walls are actually getting sound hitting off them, having so much control is allowing us to present our client with something they’ve never experienced before.”
The precision has not gone unnoticed by the people who matter most. “Whatever you’re doing with this system is really working,” the DroneArt producers told Mercury’s team. “It’s allowing us to have a really great experience for our guests.”
When shows happen without Mercury on the rig, the difference is felt immediately. “They love it so much,” Hornback says. “When they go to other shows that we’re not at, they come back and they’re like, ‘Oh, we missed you guys last weekend.’” He attributes that reaction largely to ADAPTive’s precision.
With additional DroneArt shows in development and Mercury pursuing more long-term touring partnerships, the company expects its EAW inventory to continue playing a central role. “We love EAW,” Ball concludes.